Antioch Funnies

• JB never shaves on the weekends. It's his chance, while not in uniform, to take a break. So, in the morning, as we were leaving, Isaac turned to JB and said, "Daddy, why did you put your whiskers on today?" Guess he's used to seeing him well-shaved and in uniform.
• Isaac, when given a snack he wasn't counting on surprised us all by saying: "What's the big idea?"
• Elijah, when viewing a headless dog in the Mosaic Museum in Antioch said, "Doggy's head falled off." I asked him how it fell off, and he said, "God."
• We passed a group of school children in the museum, who like usual, became infatuated with the boys. At one point, however, I could tell that they were saying something about me. I wasn't sure what it was, but I turned to them and said, "Anlayorum" which is the Turkish word that would indicate I can understand what they are saying. They were completely dumb-founded and shocked and clearly embarrassed. They obviously thought I was just a regular ol' tourist -- not someone who lives in the country. It was great fun!
• Elijah has gotten into the habit of bringing me flowers (one that he picked for me is shown in the picture above). It's incredibly sweet and nearly makes me tear up every time he does it.
• I asked Elijah not to kick me at one point during our adventure. I told him that God wants us to be nice. He nodded and said, "Sorry God."

Laughter to close out 2010

I hope to complete my "year in pictures" in the next few days, but for now, I'll close out a great 2010 with a few smiles from two very popular men in my life.

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Isaac: "I love you Mommy. And I love pluto (play-dough."

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Mommy while changing Isaac's diaper. "Oh, Isaac, You have diarrhea."

Isaac: "It's not diarrhea. It's poop."

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Isaac walking around wearing his pretend stethoscope. "I'm a doctor just like daddy. I make people feel better."

Mommy: "You do?"

Isaac: "Oh yes!"

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Elijah has been using the phrase "Got them!" to express his excitement at catching bubbles. The only thing is, "Got them!" in Elijah grunts sounds more like "God ___." Not good. He also says his friend "Aksel's" name like another bad word.

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Isaac to Mommy as she emerged from the bathroom she often shares with little kids and dog: "Did you go potty all by yourself Mommy?"

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Isaac: "There's a baby in your belly Mommy. Do you like babies?"

Mommy: "Yes, I like babies."

Isaac: "Do you like ice cream?"

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Language Learning Laughter

Today I told the boys we were going to run some errands in our bike. This means they are getting loaded into the bike trailer, and I am going to try and bike them around Base. (You really notice the slightest inclines with two "thirty pounders" pulling behind you.) We needed to stop and get another form for our condo sale notarized (the lady missed one of the papers yesterday) as well as go to the Fitness Center, see Daddy (just for fun and to bring him the paintings we finger painted for him this morning), check our mail (four packages!), and get some groceries (which was cut short when me allowing them to both push their own kiddy baskets got way beyond patience level.)

Anyways, throughout the entire errand-running adventure, Isaac kept waiting to see what we were going to buy. "Mommy, we are going to go buy some errands, right?" he would ask whenever we got back into the bike trailer. I tried to explain the difference between running errands and buying errands, but he wasn't getting it. I finally gave up.

Another fun language item comes from the chubbier of the two boys. (Side note: people around Base keep telling me they can't remember which one is Isaac and which one is Elijah. Someone told me that they remember because the letter E is chubbier than the letter I. That works. I'm sharing it with people who need a bit of a reminder.)

Anyways ... Elijah's infamous "ya!" when he wants to answer in the affirmative is now becoming a "yesssss" with the ending quite pronounced. (Similar to how he says "Buzzzzz" as in Buzz Lightyear.) Being as I am currently learning a new language, I can understand how difficult even the simplest sound can be and how easily you can get it mixed up. An example: when he first started saying "yessssss" he would say "sssss, ya!"

Speaking of learning to speak another lanugage, Isaac is now counting to ten in English and Turkish! Turkish counting can still require a little help geting between 4 and 6, but I amazed at how quickly kids learn things. I did not work with the boys on this directly. I just made a point when we were reading books and counting things to follow a count to 10 in English with one in Turkish. (More for my own practice than their learning it.) Even Elijah is saying the number 3, 5, and 10 in Turkish. How fun!

Funnies

The video above is of the boys demonstrating some of their singing abilities. The song I am singing (please forgive me) is a song my Dad and Mom sing to the boys all the time.

Some other funnies from the past week:

• Elijah has not only discovered how to take his own diaper off (we have to put shorts on him immediately after he gets a diaper on), but he has apparently learned how to take off his brother's diaper. Poor Isaac came up, naked as a jay-bird, stripped down by his brother.
• I came down the other day wearing an old St. Charles volleyball t-shirt. It had a large oval in the middle of the shirt. Then, inside the oval, was a tiny volleyball. Isaac looked at my shirt and said, "There's a ball Mommy." I corrected him. "No," I said. "That's an oval." He squinted his eyes and touched the volleyball. "No Mommy," he said. "It's a ball."
• Our Commissary has little grocery carts for kids to walk around with. While I think Elijah would be too young to handle steering and putting things in his basket, when I took just Isaac to the store the other day, he did AWESOME! He loved it. He walked around, put things in when I told him what we needed, and was just generally having a fantastic time shopping.
• Isaac seems to understand who to say "Meerhaba" to. It's as if he gets that it is a Turkish word and reserved for Turkish people. In the grocery store, he'd say "Meerhaba" to any of the Turkish people who worked there. At one point, he said it too soft and the guy that was passing did not hear him and did not say it back. Isaac turned around and said, "I said Meerhaba."

Making New Fun (Part 1)

When everything is packed or being packed, you have to make new fun! We've been doing just that. We made our bedroom a "safe room" where the boys could jump on the mattress to their heart's content. Here they are jumping (and wrestling and falling and crying) away:

In addition to making fun, Isaac has also been making some fun-nies as well.

During a long stretch of afternoon arguments due to matchbox cars that kept getting into the wrong owner's hands, I finally decided to distract Elijah with food. So while Isaac played in his room, I called down the hall, "Hey Elijah? Want some spaghetti?" (I knew better than to offer food to Isaac. Toys totally outrank sustenance in his book.)

But Elijah's book?

Totally different book.

Elijah came running. As he usually does when the f-o-o-d word is mentioned. He'd take a bite, start chewing, start walking down the hallway back toward Isaac's room, and then decide to return to me for another bite. All the while delaying the slew of "Mine! No! "My turn!" that would ensue if they were too try to play together.

But alas, Elijah grew tired of the spaghetti and headed back into the room. He started yelling. Isaac started crying. Matchbox cars were going every which way.

And in the middle of Isaac crying I heard him yell: "Elijah Wuke! Go eat your dasgetti!"

More funnies

There are so many funny things that happen throughout my day. I feel like I keep saying, "I should write this down." Unfortunately, before I can, something else has occurred to send me spinning in a completely different direction and forgetting what has just happened.

But yesterday two things happened that I couldn't forget.

The first is that I lost Elijah. You don't really forget something like that. And, no, it wasn't funny at the time, but looking back, it was a little bit funny.

Elijah has gotten into hiding. If you tell him to leave a room, he drops behind a chair or the bed. Never mind that you are watching him go to his hiding place and know exactly where he is. He thinks it's hilarious.

In reality, it was probably only about 45 seconds. But it felt like 10 minutes. I t was enough time that I had enlisted Isaac's help. I went to the bathroom, came out, and couldn't find Elijah. Since my friend Robyn had just left, I worried that he had slipped out the door behind her. I asked Isaac where he was and then the two of us ran from room to room calling his name. Isaac has started calling his brother "Ewijah Wuke" (for Elijah Luke) which helped lighten the moment.

I was just starting to make a decision whether or not to move my search to the outdoors, when I found Ewijah Wuke, curled up in a corner behind the footstool, smiling, holding a stuffed animal, and thinking this was the greatest game ever. He totally knew we were looking for him. And he thought it was great fun.

Not funny at the time.

A wee bit funny in retrospect.

And he wasn't the only one making me laugh yesterday. The other moment yesterday concerned Isaac.

When we returned home from Joia's, Isaac was post-nap and was very distraught that we were no longer going to be "buh-bye." He began sobbing, uncontrollably. We have a rule in your house. You get a few minutes of sobbing. But then, if you can't put a finger on what you need, we just ask you to go cry in your room. You are allowed to cry. But you can do it where we don't have to hear it so loudly. This isn't for injuries or sickness or anything important. We do it when the crying has no apparent cause.

I asked Isaac to go cry in his room. But Elijah kept following him in there. So I instead put Isaac in the pack-n-play in the guest room that we sometimes use for naps. He screamed when I set him down, but in just a few minutes, stopped crying completely.

I went in to check on him. He had discovered Elijah's pacifiers, two of them, tucked somewhere in the pack-n-play. Isaac has never really used a pacifier so he has no idea how to use them. He had two of them in his mouth, rings around his two pointer fingers, just having a merry old time.

I asked him, as I always do, if he was done crying. "Do you want to come out with Mommy?" I asked.

He looked at me, glanced up at the ceiling, glanced down at the pacifiers in a cute, cross-eyed sort of way, and politely said to me despite his red eyes and tears on his cheeks, "Shut the door Pease Mommy."

He needed privacy with his pacifier sucking. So I gave it to him. I returned a few minutes later to a much happier Isaac. Done sucking and ready to face the world without crying.

Sweet moments.

Cutie funnies 1.1

I have decided that since this blog is my "journal" I want to make sure I am recording the funny things the boys are saying now that Isaac is talking like crazy and Elijah is starting to find his words and signs. I plan to label them by year and number. So this will be "Cutie funnies 1.1." If you want to skip these posts, feel free, but for those of you who are in love with my boys as much as I am, here you are!

• Isaac has this shape book that he loves. He can do almost all the pieces now, and I have noticed that he is self-talking to himself what I usually say to him. He'll say "push" as he tries to put a piece in. Then he will say, "That's right." He will also say, "Good job!" or "You did it!"
• Last night while in the bathtub, JB asked Isaac what some of his squeezie toys say. What does the dog say? What does the cat say? When he got to the walrus he said, "What does the walrus say?" Isaac looked confused. What does a walrus say? He thought about it for second and said: "Hi."
• I took E. to the snack cabinet last night to find what he wanted to eat. He went through as I held up items and said: "No." "No." "No." (Although it is more like naw.) Then he smiled when he saw some grapes and did "Please." Yay for communication!
• Last night Elijah told me he wanted to go to bed. Just put his head on his ear for night-night and walked to his room. I picked him up, put him in, and he was out, well before brother.